API Resource Limiting Scanner
Tests for resource exhaustion and DoS in APIs.
What is API Resource Limiting?
API Resource Limiting testing evaluates whether APIs are vulnerable to resource exhaustion attacks. This includes testing pagination limits, response sizes, computation-intensive operations, concurrent connections, and timeout handling. Weak resource limiting enables denial of service.
Why is This Important?
Resource exhaustion can crash servers, degrade performance, and cause service outages. APIs without limits can be overwhelmed by requesting massive datasets, triggering expensive computations, or opening many connections. Cloud costs can also spike dramatically from resource abuse.
How It Works
1. API Discovery
Automatically discovers API endpoints, methods, parameters, and authentication mechanisms from documentation or traffic.
2. Security Testing
Tests for OWASP API Top 10 vulnerabilities including broken authentication, excessive data exposure, and injection flaws.
3. Compliance Validation
Validates API security against industry standards with detailed findings and remediation guidance.
Key Capabilities
Complete API security coverage aligned with OWASP API Security Top 10 and industry best practices.
- Automatic API endpoint discovery
- Authentication and authorization testing
- Rate limiting and resource exhaustion checks
- Data exposure and sensitive info detection
- API versioning and deprecation analysis
Frequently Asked Questions
What resource limits should APIs implement?
Essential limits: pagination (max page size), response size limits, request body size limits, query complexity limits (GraphQL), timeout on operations, concurrent connection limits, and computation caps (regex, file processing).
How do I test for resource limit issues?
Testing: request very large page sizes, upload oversized files, send deeply nested JSON, request expensive operations without limits, open many concurrent connections, and craft slow regex or queries to consume CPU.
What are common resource limit failures?
Failures include: unbounded pagination (limit=999999), no request body limits, synchronous expensive operations, no query timeouts, allowing unlimited file uploads, and computational operations without caps (image processing, regex).
How do I implement proper resource limiting?
Implementation: enforce maximum page sizes, limit request/response body sizes, implement query timeouts, use connection pooling and limits, implement request queuing for expensive operations, and add circuit breakers for downstream dependencies.
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